Forged Letter
According to Con Coughlin, executive foreign editor of The Daily Telegraph, Mohamed Atta is mentioned in a handwritten letter from the former chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, to Saddam Hussein. Coughlin said he received the document from a "senior member of the Iraqi interim government", though this person "declined to reveal where and how they obtained it."
Habbush's July 1, 2001, letter is labeled "Intelligence Items" and is addressed: "To the President of the Ba'ath Revolution Party and President of the Republic, may God protect you." It continues:
Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national, came with Abu Ammer and we hosted him in Abu Nidal's house at al-Dora under our direct supervision.
We arranged a work program for him for three days with a team dedicated to working with him... He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy.
Coughlin quoted Ayad Allawi giving personal assurance over the document's authenticity: "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda... But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
The letter is now widely recognized as a forgery. Newsweek noted: "U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert tell NEWSWEEK that the document is most likely a forgery—part of a thriving new trade in dubious Iraqi documents that has cropped up in the wake of the collapse of Saddam's regime." According to the newsmagazine, "The Telegraph story was apparently written with a political purpose: to bolster Bush administration claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime."
In the 2008 book The Way of the World, author Ron Suskind presents evidence that the Bush administration itself was behind the forgery.
Read more about this topic: Mohamed Atta's Alleged Prague Connection
Famous quotes containing the words forged and/or letter:
“God lives! He forged the iron will
That clutched and held that trembling hill!”
—Will Henry Thompson (1848–1918)
“A letter is an unannounced visit, and the postman is the intermediary of impolite surprises. Every week we ought to have one hour for receiving letters, and then go and take a bath.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)